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The assignment: talk to Northeast Ohio brewpubs that make cocktails with beer as one of the ingredients about why they offer them and what people like about them.

Hey, no problem. I remember seeing beer cocktails on plenty of menus here and there in recent years. Or so I thought.

Using the web to scan drink menus resulted in nothing. Were all these beer cocktail offerings I’d seen been at establishments out of town?

Fortunately, someone reminded me that Butcher and the Brewer, a relatively new brewpub on East Fourth Street in downtown Cleveland, offered a few on their cocktail menu. At the moment, two — the Gin Kaboom and the Steamroller — use their citrusy American IPA, Stop Hop Kaboom, while another, the Apfelweiss, is half hard cider and half Ride Wit Me, a Belgian-style wheat with notes of ranging from bananas and citrus to bubblegum and sweet light breads.

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The beer comes first when it comes to creating the cocktails, which sell about as well as the restaurant’s other signature cocktails, says bartender Jessica Catlett.

“We go off the beer we’d like to use, and then we use any of the liqueurs or juices that we have in house to bring out any of the flavors we have in the beer,” she says. “So it’s basically to highlight the beers.

“We’re trying to make a difference with how beer is seen,” she adds. “We have a lot of people here that don’t drink beer, so it was a way to incorporate it.”

I eventually hit pay dirt when it comes beer-cocktail offerings — the arsenal of “Beertails” on the menu at Avon Brewing Co.

Opened in August by brothers-in-law Mathias Hauck (brewer), Brian Weaver (chef) and Dan Weaver on Detroit Road, Avon Brewing Co. is a full-service restaurant that, at the time of this writing, has nine of its own brews on tap — plus their own cream soda and root beer — as well as 15 guest handles.

“We see the craft-beer movement going in a wonderful direction. Our area is not saturated by any means,” says Hauck, who sees Avon Brewing as part of a return to community-style pups that make their own beers. “You’ll still have your big guys — your Great Lakes (Brewing Co.), your Fat Head’s. … And they’re going to drive their products as far as they can get them, and that’s a wonderful opportunity. Our business plan at this point is not that. We don’t distribute anywhere else but here at this point.”

That is set to change, slightly, when the Lake Erie Crushers sell four of their brews at their home games in Avon this summer. In the meantime, though, the guys at Avon Brewing focus on offering a lot of choices to their customers, including 10 to 15 Beertails at any one time. They range from about $7 to $10, Hauck says, and sell really well.

Hauck gives most of the credit for the creations to their bar manager and mixogist, Ryan Finnegan.

“He has really taken up the call to implement my ideas with beer and paired them with phenomenal drinks,” Hauck says.

The drink that started it all, they say, is the Ohana Mama, which takes Ohana — their popular pineapple wheat beer — and dances it with Malibu rum, pineapple juice and mango vodka. Finnegan says he was smitten with an early batch of Ohana and started adding the mixers to it.

“We were still working on some of the construction here, and I went over to Mathias and said, ‘You gotta try this!’ He said, ‘What is this?’ ‘I’m like, ‘It is an Ohana Mama!’ ‘What’s in it?’ ‘Hold on — let me go check,” Finnegan recalls.

Along the way came other Beertails, including the Autumn in Avon and the Citrus Cooler, which incorporate the French Creek Pale Ale; the Detroit Road Traffic Jam, the Eagle-Rita, the Eccentric Irishman Mule — their Celtic slant on a Moscow Mule — and the Flying Monkeys, all of which use Eagle IPA; and the Ohana Mama on Vacation, a take on the original boasting elements of a pina colada.

On my recent Friday-afternoon visit to Avon Brewing Co., I oh-so-begrudgingly tasted 10 beertails, starting with the lightest — the refreshing Autumn in Avon, served in a pilsner glass with ice with a big slice of fruit on the rim — and working all the way to two decadent dessert martinis.

For what it’s worth, a couple of my favorites were the margarita-like Eagle-Rita, which along with the Eagle IPA has Avion tequila, ginger beer, fresh lemon and lime and homemade sour mix, and the Flying Monkeys, served in a rocks glass and marrying that same beer with Disaronno amaretto, fresh lime and grapefruit and orange juices and garnished with three cherries you taste on the backend of a sip.

Truly, though, I needed all my restraint not to finish those martinis. I really took to the Blonde Barista Choco Tini, which utilizes Avon Brewing’s Barista Blonde, a cold-brew that, Hauck says, essentially is coffee made with beer instead of water, along with Godiva chocolate liqueur, Kahlua, Avion espresso tequila and more. Even more seemingly sinful is the Kongtini. Finnegan took King Kokonut, their toasted coconut imperial porter, and put it in business with Pinnacle Whipped Vodka, Malibu rum, Kahlua and both Godiva dark and white chocolate liqueurs. To top off the visually distinct drink, the martini glass is rimmed in chocolate and toasted coconut.

It’s clear Finnegan enjoys devising Avon Brewing’s concoctions.

“You know when you get that feeling and something comes over you — ‘This is going to taste really good with this’ and ‘This is going to pair really good with this’?” he says. “So maybe by the second (try) I’ve got this amazing craft drink in front of me.”

Butcher and the Brewer’s Catlett falls back on her training when creating a beer cocktail.

“It’s just playing around with the knowledge I already have — all the mixology,” she says. “If you were to build a regular cocktail, you could use bitters to enhance all the flavors. It’s really just a chemistry thought.”

For those who want to try to invent a beer cocktail at home, Finnegan has simple advice.

“Have fun,” he says. “Think outside the box. Don’t put a limit on the things you (try) at home. Everybody’s palate is different.”

With a little bit more time, it might not be tough to find businesses offering beer cocktails.

“I honestly think it’s about ready to explode,” Hauck says. “And we know that because, obviously, people are buying them in mass.”

About the Author

Mark is a lifelong Northeast Ohioan and an Ohio University grad. Along with loving music, movies and television, he is crazy about sports and tech. Reach the author at mmeszoros@news-herald.com
or follow Mark on Twitter: @MarkMeszoros.